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Tag: Growth Strategies

  • Three Letters That Will Make Your Company More Successful

    Three Letters That Will Make Your Company More Successful

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    In September 2022, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard gave away his entire $3 billion company to ensure all of its profits would be used to combat climate change. The bold and generous decision represents a corporate shift toward environmental, social, and governance, better known as ESG.

    What is ESG? The term refers to increasingly important company standards in which decision-makers look not only at the company’s balance sheet but also its environmental, social, and governance policies.

    ESG advocates say this approach helps safeguard the planet, paves the way for more diversity in the workplace, and protects fair wages.

    But ESG also makes good business sense. According to PWC, 80% of consumers make sustainability-based purchase choices, while 83% of buyers believe companies should actively shape ESG best practices.

    Because consumers are using their dollars to support responsible businesses, business leaders consider implementing an ESG strategy. Here are five ways.

    1. Be intentional in pursuing ESG operations

    Lots of companies do good things without explicitly aiming to be ESG-focused. But deliberately choosing ESG processes offers a framework for your business’ legacy.

    Take a look at Patagonia. Chouinard decided to make sustainability central to the brand at the outset, mainly by focusing on renewable and recycled materials. Giving away the business to a climate-centered trust and non-profit organization is the capstone of that original purpose.

    Intentionally embracing ESG in your vision and policies means you’ll have a compass to consistently direct your projects, strategies, materials, and goals, which will build employee and buyer trust.

    Related: 3 Steps for Making a Positive Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Impact

    2. Move to electric vehicles

    Think about how you get your packages. Fleets of vehicles typically shuttle your stuff from the store or warehouse to your door. Other vehicles are responsible for transporting materials through the supply chain or getting workers to the office and other work events.

    All these vehicles on the road translate to a big chunk — 28% — of total greenhouse gas emissions. Using electric vehicles (EVs) is a simple way to reduce your carbon footprint, even when you can’t shift much else.

    Light-duty vehicles are the worst offenders and account for 59% of vehicle emissions. So, if it makes sense for your business, focus on switching out those vehicles first.

    Another bonus: EVs can function as mobile billboards for your business. Every time you or an employee takes a company-branded EV for a spin, the vehicle pulls extra weight by advertising for you. That’s significantly more visible — not to mention easier to scale and reassign — than your office building certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) but doesn’t have any customers who visit.

    Related: 3 Changes You Should Expect To See in Transportation in 2022

    3. Assess your supply chain

    The supply chain connects everything from your raw materials to distribution. ESG means taking ownership of as many links as possible and asking yourself what you can do to apply it at every point.

    Be transparent as you examine how inventory gets from Point A to Point B. Even though 81% of companies still need complete supply chain visibility, 75% of consumers consider transparency helpful in strengthening customer-business trust.

    When consumers feel like a business has violated that trust, they take action. In 2020, 38% of Americans boycotted at least one company. Communicate whatever you’re doing to keep your operations squeaky clean on your website, in your marketing emails, on your packaging, and anywhere else you can display your messages.

    4. Clean up your power

    Every business uses power to some degree, but the kind of energy you use can impact the environment. Because traditional fossil fuels like coal and petroleum contribute to global warming, companies are looking to transition to cleaner energy sources, such as solar and wind power.

    Yes, clean energy can be expensive. But the costs of green energy were already at record lows in 2019. In 2021, almost two-thirds of new renewable power added was less expensive than the cheapest coal-fired power plants in G20 countries.

    Government assistance can also cut the financial sting. Look into tax credits available through the Build Back Better bill. You may qualify at the local, state, and federal levels.

    5. Bring your employees into the fold

    Your team members are your best brand advocates. But they can’t share what they don’t know. Your first responsibility is to work on your culture so that people feel comfortable asking what you’re doing in different ESG areas. Start conversations about where you’re at and where you’d like to be.

    Then, get creative about how you can make ESG visible in ways that are practical for your business — even beyond the environmental space. At our company, to support diversity and gender equality within ESG, we partnered with an organization that features male and female drivers. We also intentionally ensure half of our leadership team consists of women, and we feature female employees on panels.

    Related: Why You Need to Build Sustainability Into Your Business Strategy

    Customers have moved past the days when a good product or service was enough. Now more than ever, the marketing axiom that consumers buy from brands they trust rings true. Your purpose and values count. Bringing ESG into your business meets people where they are and help you make a lasting difference.

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    Brendan P. Keegan

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  • 6 Strategic Ways to Prepare Your Small Business for the Festive Season

    6 Strategic Ways to Prepare Your Small Business for the Festive Season

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated that Christmas and New Year sales last year passed $650 billion. This year, the NRF estimates that number to be closer to $680 billion. 

    However, you can only have access to those major potential profits if you take the right steps and if you are extremely strategic about what to offer. So, how are you preparing for the holiday season?

    Here are six strategies you can get started with.

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    Kc Agu

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  • How to Become More Resilient

    How to Become More Resilient

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Throughout my career, I navigated undeveloped markets within environments where things hadn’t been figured out, and the world didn’t yet understand what we were creating. My one saving grace has always been resilience.


    Evening Standard | Getty Images

    Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, bounce back, then proceed, no matter what. It can be defined as the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape. (A recent study of 1,000 parents conducted by the PBS program, Thomas & Friends, ranked it #12 within the top 20 traits they most want in their children.)

    Resilience is the power of never giving up no matter what life swings your way.

    I was inspired by the epic career of Sir Winston Churchill at a young age, which can be summed up in one of his more famous quotes: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

    Related: How Does a Leader’s Mindset Affect the Office Environment?

    Staying the course

    The path to prosperity is often misunderstood, as when the going gets tough, many are not equipped to stand up to the test of time and quit before they reach their goals.

    Thomas Edison claimed his many wins were “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”. My addendum would be that 90% of people give up when they’re just 10% away from success.

    The closer we get to breaking through, the harder it becomes, yet testing our spirit is part of the achievement process. If things were easy, it wouldn’t be worth the effort and our sense of achievement would be considerably diminished.

    Humans are incredibly intelligent, adaptable and resilient beings. Achieving your wildest dreams is just a case of just being passionate and determined enough to achieve those goals.

    These techniques may sound rudimentary, but if you learn to train yourself to overcome any hurdle and never give up until you reach success.

    David beat Goliath, Beethoven outshone his teachers and Galileo outsmarted his peers when the odds were all against them. Only with resilience did they all succeed to leave their legacies.

    Rebuilding your brain

    I learned of stick–to–itive-ness as a toddler, being scalded by hot water in an unfortunate accident and suffering the pain and heartache of that mistake for many years after.

    Difficult experiences in business were to follow. You name it? I’ve experienced it. It’s still impossible to imagine a time in my career when things were “easy”. That’s just not how it works.

    The benefit of struggle is that you learn and adapt and become wiser. Many give up along the way, which leaves more opportunities for those of us who are determined to reach our target.

    If I hadn’t failed so many times, I wouldn’t have realized how resilient I needed to be. Meeting challenges is part of the path to success. It’s how you deal with hardships and what you do to overcome them.

    As Albert Einstein put it: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

    If you’re doing something new? Expect to make mistakes. If you hit problems? Simply work out how to overcome them. Resilience is the ability to beat every challenge and push through with your agenda.

    Related: 4 Ways to Use the Past to Capture Success

    Recording the process

    Write lists! This is the way I ensure that things from my brain are put on paper and actioned as a task list. I don’t recommend writing these lists in your phone, there is something physical about writing the tasks out and extracting them from your brain.

    Update your lists constantly, crossing off tasks that you have achieved and adding new tasks to achieve. Be organized and be determined. Every day complete a number of tasks on your list and cross them off. Do this every single day.

    Be an independent thinker and have enough self-confidence to stand up against the barrage of challenges and let-downs on the path to success. You need to believe in yourself before anyone else will believe in you. Confidence begets confidence.

    I work harder than anyone I know; this has always been my mantra. As Elon Musk puts it “Work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80-to-100-hour weeks every week. This improves the odds of success.”

    There is no such thing as a free lunch or something that comes easily. You will find in life things that come easy, go easy, or have a very limited shelf or value. Working hard brings personal satisfaction that is critical to a healthy body and mind and of course, entrepreneurial success.

    That being said, everything is a balance and it’s important to rest, sleep, eat and exercise as well, but whatever you do in life…work to be more determined and be more resilient.

    David showed Goliath the difference between a person who is resilient and a person who is privileged, and there is simply no competition.

    Related: 4 Ways to Capitalize on Being Your Own Worst Critic

    Resilience takes focus, resilience takes devotion, resilience takes passion and determination, but be assured, if you arm yourself with the power of resilience, no-one will be able to stop you from achieving your goals.

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    Jonny Caplan

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  • 10 Cost-Saving Ideas For Businesses

    10 Cost-Saving Ideas For Businesses

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    None of us is immune to what’s currently happening in the economy, forcing many business owners and executives to consider ways to cut costs. I recently asked my leadership team to take a good, hard look at their expenses to determine what can and should be cut and gauge the effects those specific savings would have on the business.

    Finding ways to save money in your business is not always as obvious as you think and can come from a few places that are not typically looked at. Here I outline ten money-saving ideas all business owners should consider.

    Related: 7 Outdated Habits That Will Paralyze Your Business

    1. Root out process inefficiencies

    Take a look at how technology can play a role in improving efficiencies. How can you utilize technology to minimize time, effort and money spent where it doesn’t need to be? Whether it’s analytical data that helps you be quicker to market or process improvements that make your supply chain run more efficiently — plus having good processes around where you spend money.

    For larger projects, obtain three quotes from separate vendors before placing an order. Make sure you negotiate the best possible cost on a meaningful purchase. Be assured that what you are buying is right for your business.

    Related: How to Ditch the Inefficiencies That Are Eating Your Revenue

    2. Reduce office expenses

    I think that the mentality of being scrappy is essential. What I mean by scrappy is being pugnacious and determined not to be wasteful. Think local and establish relationships with local businesses. In our industry, for example, we buy, manufacture and print labels for our customers and brands. Fortunately, our label vendor is literally down the street, so we’re saving money on transit costs. Utilizing your local network ensures you’re getting the best price, not just in direct costs but also in time and effort.

    3. Make sure you have the right employees for the right roles

    This boils down to “right people, right seats.” When you look at the world today and how the labor pool has, for various reasons, contracted, having the right person in a role who’s passionately engaged is vital. They get it, they want it and they can do it. Over the long haul, that spells increased efficiency and savings. Running a business where you don’t have the right people in the right seats makes everything cumbersome and challenging.

    In most businesses, marketing tends to be something companies can overspend on. That’s why it’s essential to have the right marketing person in the right seat. This person has relationships and expertise and knows when a consultant can do something and when something should be handled in-house.

    Employee retention helps, too. Teams have chemistry, they understand how people operate and they play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses. When you’re constantly replacing people on the team, that’s all learning that must be done over again instead of doing the job.

    Related: 5 Effective Strategies for Employee Retention

    4. Expand on social media and community engagement

    I’ve seen brands effectively connect the organization to the consumer through social media. One thing to understand is that your content should be organic and user-generated, not scripted or overly polished. Recording content on your own versus paying an influencer or agency thousands of dollars has a cost-benefit. But there’s an even bigger reason why you want to choose this path.

    Today’s consumers see right through content that’s heavily produced and edited. Instead, they follow, work with, purchase from and remain loyal to easily relatable brands that don’t take themselves too seriously and have no problem being transparent about every aspect of their business.

    Sit with your marketing and finance teams to determine what percentage of the annual budget needs to be allocated toward purchasing equipment and boosting posts. Use data and analytics to determine what posts help you meet your goals (e.g., engagements, views, conversions, etc.) and place your bets accordingly.

    5. Refine, then automate

    When you’re talking about logistics and shipping and the operational piece of the business, the more automated you get your orders in and out the door, the more efficient you’ll be. This hopefully means you’ll have more bandwidth to spend time doing other things, right?

    I also believe in minimizing clicks and pain points within your sales process. Have information readily available, so employees don’t have to click five different screens to get to what they need to get through. You want to free up the time to sell and reduce the time spent on administrative tasks. For example, you could automate invoicing or utilize a service that consolidates your accounts payable, so you don’t have to pay somebody for that.

    Related: Want to Improve Workplace Efficiency? Improve Your Team Dynamics First.

    6. Slice operational costs

    If you can operate all aspects of your business under one roof, that’s ideal. For example, if you complete the shipping or manufacturing of your products in-house, you don’t want to be in three different buildings — you want to be in one building so you can organize things, get the best use of your staff, maximum use of the space and highest possible output.

    You don’t want to sit on tons of office space because that is bleeding money. Whatever you can do to get out of those situations as soon as possible, the better off you’ll be. Looking into co-working spaces might be worthwhile in certain cases, too.

    7. Look at insurance and cash flow

    You need to have somebody who has the experience, knows the right questions to ask, understands your business needs, and is bound to save you money regarding insurance. For employee health benefits, make sure people have a choice and have an option that makes sense for both the business and the employee. Over and above making sure you’re not under-insured or over-insured, it’s more important that you’re insured correctly.

    Avoid short-term loans, cash advances and borrowing on high interest. If you’re buying things on credit, pay it off. And don’t get smashed with interest. Make sure you’re only buying what you need. All of those things factor into good cash flow.

    One of the things my CEO mentor always used to say is that there always needs to be a certain number in the bank. So, if we even got close to that number, he would send out fire alarms. It was all hands on deck evaluating things, cutting things we didn’t need and making sure that the company’s cash position was one we felt comfortable with. This way, we could sleep at night and know we were in good shape. That’s just one of those old-school mentalities that have always stuck with me.

    8. Staff up or hire out?

    If you don’t have the expertise, you need to be ultra-selective in ensuring you’re not just being penny-wise and pound-foolish. I always say you don’t want to step over the dollar bills to pick up pennies. If you can save money on wages and other things, that’s great, but you must set KPIs.

    You have to understand (and communicate) what your expectations are from these independent contractors; otherwise, you’re just going to be spending good money without seeing any benefit from it. And that’s throwing money out the window. So, there’s a little bit of a catch-22 there. You’ll save money on the fringe but must have measurables to ensure they’re performing.

    Related: 8 People You Should Hire to Grow Your Startup Fast

    9. Reduce travel expenses

    If you don’t have to travel, don’t. But when you do need to travel, travel effectively. Make sure that there’s a good travel policy about meals, hotels, flights, etc. These expenses can go through the roof if you don’t have some control. Use Zoom, Teams and other messaging applications when possible, but also be cost-effective in managing travel.

    Related: 9 Business Expenses You Can Reduce or Eliminate to Save Thousands

    10. Specialize in what you’re good at

    So, you’re a sales and marketing operation, and you’re struggling. Then you, all of a sudden, decide you’re going to start doing packaging, but you have no clue how to do it. This is probably a recipe for failure because you’re not focusing on the areas you’re good at, and you’re taking time and effort away to try and learn something you don’t need to. But the nice thing about the way the world is that somebody out there can do it; you need to find the right partner.

    Being careful with money doesn’t mean being cheap — quite the opposite. It means honoring the value of the money entrusted to your company by customers for goods and services they care about.

    Related: How to Specialize Without Locking Your Startup Out of the Market

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    Vincent Tricarico

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  • ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ — One Entrepreneur’s Method for Achieving Any Goal

    ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ — One Entrepreneur’s Method for Achieving Any Goal

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    Here’s a simple technique for making lasting change.

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    Aytekin Tank

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  • The Best Employees Want More Than Just Money. Here Are 6 Ways to Attract Them.

    The Best Employees Want More Than Just Money. Here Are 6 Ways to Attract Them.

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    Black Friday Subscription Sale – Unlock this subscriber exclusive article and more for 50% off today.

    Access all Entrepreneur content with no ads, unlock discounts, and get exclusive advice only available to our subscribers. Plus, our magazine delivered straight to your door.

    Get 50% off an annual subscription today. Just use code SAVE50 at checkout.

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    Entrepreneur Staff

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  • No One Would Rent Me a Café In Trendy NYC Neighborhoods, So I Tried Something Risky. Now I Have Three Coffee Shops.

    No One Would Rent Me a Café In Trendy NYC Neighborhoods, So I Tried Something Risky. Now I Have Three Coffee Shops.

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    Entrepreneurs can be impatient. When we have a great idea, we want to make it happen now. But I’ve learned that patience — taking time to convince resistant customers, or to prove your concept to dubious investors — can create an outcome much truer to your vision.


    Courtesy of White Noise Coffee Company

    Seven years ago, I began trying to open a coffee shop in New York City. I had long worked as a barista, and imagined a café that treated coffee like a performance — the bar acting as a stage, where baristas would pull the espresso shot, weigh it, and heat it to a precise temperature, all while telling the origin story of the beans. I wanted the shop’s sounds and smells and visuals to envelop each customer. I’d call it White Noise Coffee Company.

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    Vanesa Kim

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  • How to Boost Sales With Seasonal Products

    How to Boost Sales With Seasonal Products

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Fall is just around the corner. While some people will mourn the end of summer, others will rejoice, celebrating the cooler weather and everything that comes with it, including back-to-school week, Thanksgiving and Halloween. And your business should be piggybacking off that excitement to boost sales. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, back-to-school shopping represents the second-biggest spending event of the year, with the average household planning to shell out nearly $700 on related clothes and supplies this year.


    Vadym Plysiuk | Getty Images

    Ultimately, all seasonal changes can and should be exicting for growing businesses, and here’s how to boost sales at those junctures accordingly.

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    Syed Balkhi

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  • 4 Strategies to Increase Your Conversion Rates

    4 Strategies to Increase Your Conversion Rates

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    There’s no question that conversion rates are important to the success of any business. After all, a company can’t make money if its potential customers aren’t converting into actual paying customers. But what many business owners don’t realize is just how big of an impact hitting your conversion goals can have on your business’s bottom line.

    Consider this: If your company has a 1% conversion rate and you’re bringing in $1 million in revenue each month, increasing your conversion rate by just two percentage points — to 3% — means you’ll be bringing in an additional $2 million each month. That’s an extra $24 million per year!

    Of course, increasing your conversion rate is easier said than done. But it’s certainly not impossible. Here are a few tips to help you boost those numbers and reach your full revenue potential:

    Related: 5 Key Tips to Improve Conversion Rates

    1. Perform regular funnel analysis

    Funnels can be really simple (ad, sales page, delivery email) or incredibly complex (several ads leading to segmented landing pages leading to a sales call leading to … well, you get the picture). At any stage in the process, your funnel either loses people or moves them forward to the next stage.

    If you’re not regularly performing a funnel analysis, usually called an audit, you could be missing out on revenue that could be a game-changer for your business. Let’s look at a simple evergreen webinar funnel with a “buy now” option for a $1,500 offer as an example. We’re going to keep it super simple and assume you’re sending just one email to your existing list to drive them to the webinar registration page. Your funnel looks like this:

    • Email: converting at 50%

    • Registration page: 15%

    • Webinar: 20% watch rate

    • Order conversions: 0.67%

    With the conversion rates above, you’ll bring in $1,500 or one sale.

    Your email is converting really well, so we don’t need to do anything with that, but the registration page? Not doing so hot. We want that number to be 25% or higher, so we’re going to optimize the registration page.

    This might mean changing up the copy, design, images — even the offer itself — until we hit our goal of a 25% conversion rate on the registration page. With all other things being equal, that increase in conversion rate on the registration page alone nets you another sale, bringing your revenue for this funnel up to $3,000.

    By working through each step in your funnel this way, you could go from bringing in $1,500 to $28,500 — just by hitting the minimum conversion rate at each funnel stage!

    2. Make sure your website is optimized for conversions

    Your website is often the first point of contact between you and a potential customer, so it’s important to make sure it’s up to snuff. Is your site easy to navigate? Do the pages load quickly? Is the copy clear and concise? Is there a strong call to action on each page?

    If you answered “no” to any of these questions, it’s time to do some website soul-searching. Making even small changes — like adding testimonials or enhancing your calls to action — can make a big difference in terms of conversion rates.

    Related: 5 Tactics to Supercharge Your Website Conversion Rate

    3. Segment your email list

    When it comes to email marketing, quality is more important than quantity. Sending out a generic message to your entire list is likely to result in few conversions because not every recipient will be interested in what you have to say. Segmenting your list enables you to send more targeted, relevant messages that are more likely to lead to conversions.

    Not sure how to segment your list? Start by dividing it into smaller groups based on factors like geography, age, gender, interests, etc. Then craft different messages for each group.

    4. Personalize the user experience

    In today’s competitive market, simply having a website isn’t enough — you need to go above and beyond to stand out from the crowd. One way to do that is by personalizing the user experience for each visitor to your site.

    Thanks to advancements in technology, this is easier than ever before. There are now numerous tools available that allow you to collect data about each user and then use that information to display content that’s tailored specifically for them.

    Related: Why a ‘Personal’ Customer Experience Is Critical to Your Business’ Success

    Reaching — and exceeding — your desired conversion rate can have huge implications for your business revenue. If you’re not happy with your current numbers, take heart; there are plenty of things you can do to improve them. By following these four tips, you can start making progress toward reaching those all-important conversion goals.

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    Jacinda Santora

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  • The 4 Principles of Onboarding for Product-Led Growth Platforms

    The 4 Principles of Onboarding for Product-Led Growth Platforms

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As the product-led growth (PLG) motion becomes increasingly more popular, the process will mature as will the strategic process of acquiring customers. The stages of customer acquisition are becoming ever more apparent in line with the flywheels of both the PLG process and the inbound marketing strategy.

    The PLG flywheel has four stages; activate, adopt, adore and advocate. The inbound flywheel has three; attract, engage and delight. Each of these spins faster the more you learn, test and iterate for long-term success. Yet none of these reflects the principles of product-led onboarding in my mind.

    Related: How Customer Enablement Drives Product-led Growth

    The stages of onboarding for B2B PLG organizations

    To set the scene, onboarding does not start at the point someone signs a contract or inserts their credit card details. Onboarding is widely agreed to start at the first touchpoint in any channel your organization owns. This could be an ad, a social media post, an event or a speculative email, for example, and each of these must set the tone or trend for the following activities and actions. So, what are the four principles?

    • Marketing onboarding: making the unfamiliar familiar

    • Platform onboarding: familiar to the freemium user

    • Value onboarding: freemium to paid user

    • Peer-led onboarding: paid user to product champion

    For each principle, there are corresponding tactics and strategies — some of which can be applied in silos, and others perform best when used in a cumulative or combined strategic approach. Let’s discuss these in more detail.

    Marketing onboarding principles for PLG companies

    The very first stage of onboarding for product-led companies is marketing. From here, there is a natural flow to take strangers to champions. But what does that look like, and what is the best strategy focusing on B2B SaaS? For me, it’s the inbound marketing strategy, but let’s look at some of the channels you can adopt:

    You can dominate a single channel alone, but that may not prove beneficial to your longer-term goals. For many, content marketing is the price of admission to sit at the table, but for content to succeed in today’s overcrowded online world, you need email marketing to support it, paid advertising to promote it and social media marketing (both organic and paid) to distribute it.

    Therefore, a multi-channel persona-led inbound marketing strategy is the only choice. Unless, of course, your PLG platform also sells to the enterprise, and then you will require both an inbound and account-based marketing strategy for continued success. Beyond this, you need a strong messaging strategy on your website’s copy that will drive your new interested parties to start to try your platform.

    Related: Inbound Marketing — What is it and Why Does it Matter?

    Platform onboarding principles for PLG companies

    Once you’ve fully optimized your marketing strategy (which can only happen over time as you collect and use your data) you want to fully optimize your onboarding process. To do this, you need to use a recognized framework or combination frameworks like:

    Nail this stage of the onboarding process and your customer acquisition program will be heating up. Not only have I given you the playbook on PLG onboarding here, but I’ve also given you the tools to do it — and I’m not done yet.

    Value onboarding for product-led SaaS

    The articles I’ve shared with you in the hyperlinks will give you and your team more value guidance and context for sure, but there’s another stage to optimizing onboarding and that requires tools. These tools come in the form of:

    • Pendo

    • Userflow

    • Chameleon

    • Heap

    • Amplitude

    • Mixpanel

    • FullStory

    There’s also a whole host of other tools to help you understand if your product is delivering the value you set out to deliver, where the bottlenecks are and how you can deal with them. Optimizing your PLG platform for value is how you minimize the time that your freemium users take to recognize the true value of your product.

    Keep optimizing to deliver ongoing value and to understand how to build and focus on future product and/or feature releases.

    Peer-led or peer-to-peer onboarding for product-led organizations

    The final principle of onboarding is to optimize your platform’s ability for your champions or cheerleaders to invite their friends and colleagues. Whilst incentives are always good, ultimately, you want to build a product so good, so valuable and so necessary that your best users can’t help but talk about you and hype you up.

    You want these users to tell their stories and have your platform as a hero in the story. So, how do you do that? The likelihood is that if you nail the first three, this one takes care of itself. However, your job is not to become complacent but to treat this onboarding phase like a partnership channel — one that is driven by a user community, not a sales team.

    You can add the ability to invite and share from their account, that’s pretty much standard these days, but ask your team this question: How do we enable our best users, the champions and cheerleaders, to easily invite and onboard new users on our behalf? Figure that out through a champions committee or something similar, and you’ve nailed the four stages of PLG onboarding.

    Related: How to Turn Strangers into Loyal Customers With User Onboarding

    I hope you enjoyed this take on the four principle stages of onboarding for product-led growth platforms and that I’ve given you enough for you to go back to your teams and refocus your efforts. Using this framework will allow your organization to become more embedded and cross-functional, which can only prove beneficial for the entire go-to-market motion.

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    Paul Sullivan

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  • A Simple Guide to Software Integration for Startups

    A Simple Guide to Software Integration for Startups

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Your product is your company’s primary selling point, but it doesn’t have to be the only feature. In fact, when companies open up their products to integrations with third-party software, they unlock an entire world of possibilities. In the years since releasing our flagship product, the smart video intercom, the ButterflyMX team and I have made a pointed effort to expand our reach by integrating our software with third-party products.

    For example, just this year, we partnered with RemoteLock so that our unified access control solutions now connect to more than 80 smart locks to seamlessly provide building and apartment unit access from our mobile app. This has significantly expanded our products’ capabilities without the time, energy and financial investment of launching an entirely new product, which has helped grow our business substantially.

    If you’re at the helm of a startup looking to expand your product’s reach, consider integrating with other software.

    Related: Challenges that Companies Face in Software Integration

    What are the benefits of integrating your product with other software?

    No matter what product or service you offer, by integrating with other software, you combine various platforms into one unified software architecture. And by creating a large, integrated system, you increase functionality and convenience for consumers.

    Further, integrating your product with other software expands your product’s capabilities without the need to develop new products. Software integrations allow you to advance and expand your product faster because you exponentially increase its capabilities. Software integrations also offer an easy way to advance professional relationships with other companies in the industry.

    Why are partnerships important?

    When you’re building a company from the ground up, you must develop partnerships. Across all industries, the leading companies boast multiple integrations. In fact, the average SaaS (software-as-a-service) company has 15 integrations. However, some SaaS companies boast upwards of 500 integrations. By partnering with another company in your industry, you become a part of their growth. Then, when their product succeeds, so does yours, and vice versa.

    One of the biggest advantages of establishing integration partners is enhanced company growth by expanding your user base. Not only are you giving your customers a new tool or feature — leading to higher customer retention — but you’re also opening your business up to an entirely new customer base. With a partnership in place, you can expand your customer base and add new users with ease.

    Overall, developing deep business partnerships and software integrations will grow your business short- and long-term. In fact, you can think of new integrations as a new sales channel. You’re adding your products and services to an entirely new marketplace.

    Because your software integrations should be with companies in your industry or a related one, you’ll be selling to new customers with a similar customer profile. This means your product will inherently address their needs.

    How to approach partnerships as a startup

    So, you’ve decided it’s time to grow your company by enabling third-party software integrations. But how do you go about finding worthwhile partners? First, you need to look for companies whose customers match your ICP, or ideal customer profile. An ideal customer profile is a detailed outline of your company’s ideal client. The ICP is used to adjust marketing and lead generation tactics.

    By working with companies whose ICP matches yours, you increase the likelihood that their customers will find value in your product and vice versa. But remember, software integration isn’t a completely smooth process. The more integrations you enable, the more maintenance you’ll perform. Additionally, when changes are necessary, you must obtain approval from teams at both companies rather than just your own.

    So, ensure you have an internal team who can dedicate their time primarily to building the integration from the ground up and maintaining it post-launch to address and solve problems.

    Related: How to Use Strategic Partnerships for More Explosive Growth

    How to integrate your product with other services

    While software integration presents a unique and valuable opportunity for your business, partnerships aren’t guaranteed to succeed without hard work. In addition to a relevant and high-quality software integration, you need a robust strategic outline.

    Make sure you put your customers’ needs above all else. When building your software integrations, consider which products your customers already use, what kind of systems they may want to integrate with and how a specific integration can improve their experience with your product.

    Further, ensure that your integration has longevity by creating a strong foundation for your partnership. Integrations aren’t a quick hack to multiply your customer base. Instead, you should develop integrations with long-term business goals in mind. Then, with each new iteration of your integration, take into account customer feedback to improve the integration and your product overall.

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    Cyrus Claffey

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  • Scale or Fail: 4 Ways to Run a Successful Social Impact Business

    Scale or Fail: 4 Ways to Run a Successful Social Impact Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    One of the first lessons I learned as founder and CEO of Truly Free is that meaning well does not guarantee success. Years ago, when we were a startup, I had it in my mind that all I needed to be successful was an unshakeable vision to make a positive social impact, a must-have product, not a nice-to-have product and an easy-to-use website. Reality dispelled that notion quickly.

    Anyone new to ecommerce learns quickly that having a website doesn’t mean website traffic just appears. Basic logistics, however, forced us to reconsider everything — the cost to ship our natural laundry detergent costed as much as the product itself.

    We went back to the beginning. This didn’t mean simply finding a solution to the immediate problem, although that was central to our effort. We started with our business’s core goal: providing a safe product for families, especially children and those with specific allergic reactions from chemicals and harsh ingredients. The outcome was us completely re-envisioning the modern laundry room and how we did business.

    Four key elements emerged as we scaled our business into a successful social impact brand. These critical components required more than good intentions and a website, but the journey — and more importantly, the results have generated a positive social impact far beyond our original vision. Here are four ways social impact businesses can boost their brand’s purpose and bottom line

    Related: How to Know When to Give Up, When to Pivot and When to Persist

    1. Make relationship building a core competency

    To us, customers are family. This approach is more than simply a way of thinking — it is our way of doing business.

    With every decision, we challenge ourselves to reflect on whether we would do this for our family. Would we want our family to use a product with these ingredients? Would this offer or price be fair and something we would recommend to our families?

    Every detail matters. Attention to detail may be a well-worn idea. Still, when customers actually witness the attention and energy put into every detail — from their experience on the website to the ingredient list on the product — they begin to see your company not just for the products you generate but also for the values and mission you are putting out into the world. These efforts result in authentic transparency and trust, the foundation for a solid and long-lasting relationship.

    For example, we put every ingredient on products, so our customers can research for themselves. Based on customers’ feedback, it has played a major role in creating the long-term relationships we aim to establish with them.

    Relationship building may be a unilateral initiative, but it goes a long way with every customer. We understand transactions pay bills, but our experience proves that relationships build companies.

    2. Connect humans to humans

    Our non-toxic fabric softener dryer sheets are handmade by women rescued from poverty and trafficking. Our customers know this and resonate with this. Our customers also know the money they spend with us goes towards helping free women and children from trafficking, shelter and feed orphans and even a village in Haiti that is hearing impaired.

    We make it a priority for our customers to know the power of their purchase and how it positively impacts other people’s lives.

    Transparency combined with purpose makes for good business. Amplifying the human element of your business right out of the gate can rapidly communicate your mission statement and strengthen your position as a social impact business.

    3. Prioritize convenience

    Everyone’s busy. We don’t want hassles, and neither do our customers. We may have the best intentions, but people won’t subscribe to our offerings if we are hard to do business with.

    Brands must always prioritize convenience for every customer interaction. For example, as an ecommerce, subscription-based business, we thrive on subscriptions. If brands can make a customer’s life easier by automating an offer, like a subscribe and save model, then they should integrate that into their website, promotions and upsells. At the same time, we also recognize that a new customer may not be ready to make a recurring commitment after the first brand interaction. To ensure you’re presenting options that will enable potential new subscribers to familiarize themselves with the brand, businesses should offer a way to buy single transactions at checkout and a compelling offer or bundle that will further entice them to try out the subscribe and save with no strings attached.

    At first, some brands might think this model reduces subscriptions when it results in a “dating” opportunity, where a new customer can get to know the brand without the total commitment upfront. As a result, and if done correctly, your subscription base will likely continue to grow.

    By prioritizing convenience in every customer interaction, you are empowered to reduce friction and ultimately meet every existing and potential customer’s unique and situational needs.

    Related: 4 Suggestions to Improve Convenience for Consumers

    4. Reimagine the business model

    As noted at the beginning, logistics forced us to reimagine our business model for the better. Shipping for laundry detergent costs as much as the product itself. Our original plan was a surefire way to go out of business fast.

    What was the problem? Weight. What could be done about it? This question challenged us to approach laundry detergent in a whole new way.

    Water makes up the bulk of detergent. Removing the water would solve the problem and help us fulfill our mission of eliminating millions of single-use plastics. This solution led us to pioneer an entirely new vision of the cleaning and laundry space for homes. Today, we sell refills, not giant plastic bottles that end up in landfills.

    Business doesn’t have to be business as usual. Taking a closer look at operational challenges introduces opportunities to reconsider product development completely. And when you take a hard close look at the details, you can completely reimagine the direction of your business for the better.

    Related: 8 Ways To Pivot Your Business To Kickstart Growth

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    Stephen Ezell

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  • How to Produce Quality Competitive Intelligence

    How to Produce Quality Competitive Intelligence

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Competitive intelligence, or CI, is a crucial component of business strategy. It helps you understand your competitors, identify new opportunities and better predict market trends.

    Competitive intelligence is a continuous process, not a one-off briefing document. It is also not just about the competition. It also includes insights into your client and their needs, which can help them to get ahead of the game in their industry. You’ll be able to anticipate trends and opportunities before they happen, giving your clients a competitive advantage over their competitors and allowing them to grow their business faster than those who don’t have access to this kind of information.

    Related: Your Business is Failing Because You Have a Bad Strategy. Here Are 5 Hacks for the Perfect Business Strategy

    Don’t rely on what you think your clients or competitors want

    We often assume that we know what our clients or competitors want — this is a mistake. It’s easy to do this when you’re working with a firm from a similar industry, but it’s important to remember that every client has unique needs and interests.

    You should always start by asking questions about the business objectives of your client or competitor. These questions will give you insight into what they are trying to accomplish and how they hope to achieve it — information that can be invaluable when crafting reports for them in the future.

    Gain other perspectives

    There are four primary groups you need to speak with:

    • Users of your product or service, including current and former users. They can tell you how they use it, why they like it or don’t. They can also give insight into the people who don’t like it. And if they’re former users, they may have valuable information on why they left. You’ll want as much detail as possible so that you can make use of that data in competitive intelligence analysis later on (for example, “Users say this feature is confusing.”)
    • People who do not use your product or service but would potentially be interested in using it if they knew more about what it does and how well it works. These are potential customers for whom there may not currently be an opportunity for purchase — they don’t know enough about your offering yet! Get them talking about their business needs so that you can market effectively in the future. For example: “This company thinks our product could help them solve their problem.”
    • People who do not currently use a competitor’s product or service but would potentially become a customer if offered one at an attractive price point or with better features than those offered by competitors (e..g., “These guys love our product because we provide X at only half its competitors’ price.”) If these folks were already using something else — and had a good reason why — you’d want to know if there’s anything specific about those products/services which makes them unsatisfactory; if yes then perhaps these shortcomings could be remedied through innovation efforts within yourself?
    • People who are already using your product or service but have not yet been convinced of its value (e.g., “We’re working on getting these guys to see the benefits of our product; we think they will like it once they try it.”). These are potential customers that you may need to spend more time educating about why your offering is better than competitors’ offerings.

    Related: Customer Intelligence As a Revenue Predictor

    Fully understand your audience and their needs

    It’s imperative to understand the needs of your audience and the needs of your competitors. A comprehensive competitive intelligence program can provide a wealth of information that will help you better understand the landscape, your customers’ needs and how they behave toward their competitors.

    Understanding the needs of your audience is essential for any successful business venture. You need to know what matters to them so that you can meet those needs with an innovative solution or product. This can be as simple as knowing who they are (demographics), where they live (geography) or what they like (lifestyle). It could also mean understanding what motivates them; why would someone buy one product over another? How many people do I need to sell my product annually to break even?

    Related: 9 Ways to Meet and Understand Your Audience

    Identify different audience segments

    Once you’ve identified your audience, the next step is to segment them into different groups based on their needs. This will allow you to craft a solution that meets all those needs. For example, if you’re selling a product aimed at helping people lose weight, one group could be people who need something simple and easy to use. Another group might be more tech-savvy and want something more complex and customizable. Knowing how each audience segment views fitness products will help you see what aspects of your offering are most important for each audience type.

    Related: 7 Outdated Habits That Will Paralyze Your Business

    Experimentation can help understand clients and competitors and identify new opportunities

    Experimentation is a vital part of the process. Experimentation can help you better understand your clients and competitors, identify new opportunities and discover how to make your offerings more competitive. Such an example is A/B testing. This type of experiment compares two versions of a single element to see which one performs better by improving conversions, sales or whatever else you’re looking for. For example, it could be an email subject line A/B test comparing “Doing these four things will help you grow sales” with “Doing these four things will help you grow sales 50%.”

    Ensure you are fully informed before you move forward with a new product or service

    To stay ahead of the curve, you must constantly gather information from as many sources as possible. Talk to your clients and ensure you are fully informed before moving forward with a new product or service. Conduct interviews about what they think are missing in the market, and see if a gap needs filling. Look at data from recent surveys, reviews or complaints that your company has received. Look at what competitors are doing and take notes on what’s working for them and what isn’t. Talk to people in your industry who can give feedback on how they perceive your business and suggestions on how it could improve its services or offerings.

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    Christopher Massimine

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  • 7 Tips to Manage a Fully Remote International Business

    7 Tips to Manage a Fully Remote International Business

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    More companies are ditching the overhead costs of dedicated office spaces and unlocking global growth opportunities by transitioning to a fully remote business operation.

    While the potential benefits are significant, business leaders will face various challenges. Follow these tips to manage your fully remote company better.

    Related: 7 Outdated Habits That Will Paralyze Your Business

    1. Clearly define your mission and vision

    Steering a company in a strategic direction is challenging when everyone is located within the same building, and it is even harder for fully remote organizations.

    A clearly defined and adequately communicated mission and vision are vital for every successful remote business as this serves as a roadmap to guide the actions of every employee and the organization.

    If your employees connect with your mission and vision, everyone understands what they are working towards, how the company plans to get there, and what is expected from them. This unified vision is increasingly essential in an organization characterized by diverse backgrounds, cultures and languages.

    2. Don’t think local. Think global

    A fully remote business gives you access to new markets and a global customer base and opens up opportunities to tap into global talent pools.

    Don’t fall into the trap of keeping your hiring strategies and recruitment drives contained to home markets.

    For example, despite an ample supply of English-speaking Eastern European teachers, when Novakid was ready to launch, the founders looked for native English speakers from across the globe via Facebook groups.

    Building a globally distributed workforce enabled the business to expand into new markets with teachers in each region rapidly. This approach also created a pool of non-native English-speaking tutors who are highly proficient in the language but offer services at a lower cost to the company.

    Furthermore, offering classes with bilingual teachers from different regions created unique opportunities for students to experience diverse cultures and accents, which became a competitive differentiator for the company.

    A globally distributed workforce also provides additional benefits, such as better business continuity and diverse thinking, which can drive innovation and greater organizational agility.

    Related: Are Fully-Remote Businesses the Future?

    3. Build a company culture based on accountability

    The lack of direct oversight of employee time often causes concern for business leaders as their company transitions from a brick-and-mortar operation to a fully remote business. While keeping a tight rein on working hours is tempting, it is vital that every remote business finds the balance between flexibility and accountability. Rigid rules and set working hours can stifle innovation and complicate working arrangements.

    Instead, give employees the flexibility to structure their workdays around their individual needs, circumstances and preferences. The key is to set clear expectations regarding outputs and deliverables rather than tightly monitoring their inputs.

    Employees who understand this dynamic will have the discipline to manage their time effectively to complete their work tasks while also getting to the personal things they plan for their day — be it a family time or an exercise session.

    4. Empower your employees to act independently

    Building a company culture based on values like trust, honesty, discipline, courage, integrity and curiosity are the ingredients for a thriving remote international business.

    Over time, this gives employees the courage to take the initiative, make decisions, solve problems independently and, ultimately, take responsibility for their actions and outcomes when they don’t have direct access to management or colleagues. And waiting for feedback via online collaboration tools can also create bottlenecks that slow implementation and reduce organizational agility.

    As such, successful remote organizations give staff the autonomy to make their own decisions and the space they need to be brave.

    Fostering a culture of trust nurtures other positive traits within a remote workforce, such as curiosity, bravery, innovative thinking and bold experimentation. The freedom and confidence to explore, develop and try new methodologies and new ways of working can create a competitive advantage for your organization.

    This environment also supports a trend known as the “culture of everyone,” where employees become responsible for their development and learning paths. This is a powerful tool to boost employee motivation and satisfaction and can serve as an effective way to attract and retain talent.

    5. Prioritize talent and experience

    A key element in my company’s success as a remote international business has been our preference for hiring people with expertise and experience. While some companies prefer hiring junior people and developing them internally to keep salary costs low, this is not always the most appropriate option for remote organizations.

    The time and resources this approach requires often comes with an opportunity cost. And a junior person with no experience has to learn a lot. However, the nature of remote work means that managers cannot always provide the access and availability needed to quickly get junior staff up to speed.

    Bringing in people with expertise and experience means you get staff who can self-manage and work with freedom while delivering the quality outputs they require.

    6. Implement technologies that help employees

    Technology offers the ideal solution to transcend the geographic boundaries and time zones that remote international companies deal with daily.

    Online productivity tools like Slack create clear communication channels for different goals and purposes while supporting collaboration between dispersed teams and different workstreams.

    Video conferencing tools are another indispensable tool. They ensure that remote companies maintain interpersonal face-to-face interactions, which are vital to building rapport and conveying meaning beyond verbal or written communication. These interpersonal interactions are also important to transmit corporate culture.

    Productivity management tools provide managers with insights into workforce efficiency and outputs. The resultant analytics can help identify improvement areas or highlight workflows or processes that need refinement.

    7. Champion internal communication

    Fully remote international businesses require the appropriate tools, processes and procedures to drive clear and concise organization-wide communication and foster collaboration among employees in remote teams.

    Remote teams must frequently communicate transparently and correctly, regardless of the channel. Management and leadership must ensure they can effectively convey their messages to the right targets.

    Effective communication fosters trust through transparency and ensures remote employees clearly understand their tasks, roles and responsibilities.

    Creating multiple channels for staff to give their feedback and opinions, ask questions, share ideas, profile great work or simply voice their concerns allows remote workers to communicate their value and makes them feel heard and empowered.

    Related: Maintaining a Collaborative Culture in a Hybrid and Remote World

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    Max Azarov

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  • How to Increase Your Sales by Analyzing Your Marketing Funnel

    How to Increase Your Sales by Analyzing Your Marketing Funnel

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Your marketing funnel is the process that your potential customers go through as they move from awareness of your product or service to purchase. The funnel narrows at each stage, from the many people who are aware of your brand to the few who actually buy from you. Understanding your marketing funnel is essential to improving results and driving conversions.

    Let’s say you’re trying to increase sales. You need to understand how your marketing funnel works so you can make changes that will lead to more sales. Here are four steps you can take to analyze your marketing funnel and improve results:

    1. Define your marketing funnel stages

    2. Set conversion goals for each stage

    3. Identify bottlenecks in your funnel

    4. Test and experiment to improve results

    Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps so you can use them in your own business:

    Related: How to Generate Interest at Every Stage of the Marketing Funnel

    1. Define your marketing funnel stages

    The first step is to define the stages of your marketing funnel. This will vary depending on your business, but most funnels include the following stages:

    • Awareness: Potential customers become aware of your product or service.

    • Interest: Potential customers are interested in your product or service and want to learn more.

    • Consideration: Potential customers are considering your product or service and comparing it to other options.

    • Purchase: Potential customers buy your product or service.

    • Loyalty/advocacy: Customers who buy your product or service become brand advocates and promote your business to others.

    There are other variations of this model, but this is a good place to start. Once you’ve defined the stages of your funnel, you can move on to step two.

    2. Set conversion goals for each stage

    The second step is to set conversion goals for each stage of the marketing funnel. These goals should be realistic and achievable based on historical data and current circumstances. For example, if you know that 2% of people who are aware of your brand eventually buy from you, then you can set a goal of increasing that number to 3%. Once you’ve set conversion goals for each stage, you can move on to step three.

    3. Identify bottlenecks in your funnel

    The third step is to identify any bottlenecks in your marketing funnel that are preventing potential customers from moving on to the next stage of the funnel. Common bottlenecks include:

    Lack of awareness: Potential customers are not aware of your product or service because they haven’t been exposed to your marketing messages.

    Solution: Increase advertising, and create more compelling content that speaks directly to your target audience’s needs.

    Lack of interest: Potential customers are not interested in your product or service because it doesn’t solve their problems or meet their needs.

    Solution: Review your messaging and positioning to make sure you’re speaking directly to the needs of your target audience.

    Lack of consideration: Potential customers are not considering your product or service because they don’t know enough about it.

    Solution: Create more content that educates potential customers about the features and benefits of your product or service.

    Lack of purchase: Potential customers are not buying your product or service because they don’t see the value in it.

    Solution: Review pricing, packaging and positioning; consider offering discounts or other incentives; adjust messaging accordingly.

    4. Test and experiment to improve results

    The final step is to test different messages, offers, channels, etc., to see what leads potential customers down the path to purchase. Try different tactics and track results so you can continue doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. Remember, it’s important always to be testing and experimenting so you can continue improving results.

    Related: How to Create a Marketing Funnel That Will Increase Sales and Profits

    By taking these four steps, you can gain a better understanding of how your marketing funnel works and make changes that will lead to more sales. Of course, by taking these four steps regularly — perhaps quarterly — you can ensure that any changes made throughout the year actually have an impact on ROI come budget time.

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    Jacinda Santora

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  • Want to Create a Culture of Innovation? Ask These Questions

    Want to Create a Culture of Innovation? Ask These Questions

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    This past weekend, I had a rare opportunity to kick back and relax. I needed a few supplies before I settled into my couch, so I grabbed my Amazon Fire phone and headed out to the local shops. I didn’t need to bring any cash — my Amazon Wallet had me covered. When I got home, I nearly tripped over the box of laundry detergent my Amazon Dash had ordered. I remembered to book my trip to New York City on Amazon Destinations, and just as I confirmed my hotel, the doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of my order from Amazon Restaurants. I grabbed my food, settled into my comfy couch and spent the rest of the day playing Amazon’s online game, Crucible.

    Of course, none of this happened. Because while all of these Amazon products and services are real, they no longer exist. They were experiments that failed to achieve critical milestones, and Amazon shut them down.

    One of the things that made Jeff Bezos a great founder was his embrace of experimentation and failure. He relentlessly invested in new product development. But he didn’t fall in love with any one product or tactic to fulfill his vision. Instead, if an experiment failed to meet minimum expectations for performance, regardless of the amount of time and effort invested, he was quick to pull the plug, making space for future experiments.

    Innovation and experimentation are crucial to the journey of a startup. You’re in search of scalable product-market fit. Many of your assumptions are going to be wrong. Many of your experiments and tests will fail. That’s okay as long as you follow one essential rule.

    Believe in your vision, but be ruthless in shutting down initiatives that don’t meet expectations. If you don’t quickly shut down unsuccessful projects, your team will become mired in work that can’t scale, draining time and money from much higher potential ideas. Here are three questions to ask when evaluating the potential of a new product or service:

    Related: Fostering a Culture of Innovation, and What It Takes to Do It Right

    1. Will your early adopters accelerate organic growth?

    When you first launch a product, you should be able to find a core group of early adopters. Your target early adopters have problems to solve. You are launching a product that addresses those problems. If you hit the mark on features and price and can easily convey your value proposition, they should be willing to try your product with very little incentive or marketing effort. If they like it, they can quickly become evangelists within their community, creating your initial flywheel of organic growth.

    You have a critical decision to make if you cannot find a group of early adopters that will help drive organic growth. Iterate and test again, or kill the product and move on to your next idea. Unfortunately, most startups’ biggest mistake at this crucial crossroads is to ramp up spending on marketing beyond a sustainable level under the mistaken assumption that they have a marketing problem rather than a product problem. This path only leads to accelerating cash burn and missed opportunities.

    Related: 3 Common Mistakes That Are Inflating Your Marketing Budget

    2. Are your customers coming back for more?

    Once you discover messaging that attracts customers to your product, you must deliver on their expectations. Do they continue to use your product after those first few attempts? Do they keep coming back to buy more from you? Or are you suffering from high return rates, cancellations or product abandonment? You should have clear KPIs for customer behavior, consistently measuring to ensure you’re building a sticky enough offering to scale your business.

    Successful startups are built on the back of customer lifetime value (LTV) that can sustain profitable, scalable growth. High LTV is powered by strong customer retention and consistent repeat buyer behavior. If most of your customers are one-and-done, it’s unlikely you can profitably scale your company.

    Related: Are You Sitting on a Customer Retention Goldmine?

    3. Do you have enough pricing power to deliver profitability?

    Sales volume and customer retention only matter if each sale generates enough profit. The path to profitability and positive cash flow is a healthy contribution margin. Contribution margin is calculated by subtracting the variable costs required to produce and sell your product from your net sales price.

    It’s easy enough to get customers to order a free trial or accept delivery of a try-before-you-buy subscription box. But can you attract enough customers willing to pay a price that delivers an acceptable contribution margin? Too many startups fall into the trap of focusing on vanity metrics to measure the performance of their products — downloads, gross sales and free trial downloads. In the end, your product, and your startup, will only be successful if you can consistently charge a price that will generate the profits you need to support sales and marketing, new product development and your day-to-day operations.

    Related: 4 Reasons Why Pricing Is the Key to Startup Success

    The Amazon Fire phone may have failed, but the technology developed for the phone accelerated the development of two very successful products: the Echo and Alexa. Building a culture of innovation isn’t easy. It requires an acceptance of failure, supported by a culture of measurement and accountability. But it’s a powerful force for finding product-market fit, profitability scaling your startup and building enterprise value. It’s also a much more fun and fulfilling way to build your company.

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    Eric Ashman

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  • How to Build the Infrastructure Needed to Scale Your Company

    How to Build the Infrastructure Needed to Scale Your Company

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Scaling your business might sound like a dream come true. But without the proper infrastructure in place, it can quickly turn into an absolute nightmare. Trying to grow when you haven’t put solid building blocks in place is like throwing up a tent on quicksand. It won’t be long before you sink — and at that point, getting out might not be an option.

    Many companies, especially newer ones, overlook the importance of infrastructure in business. Unfortunately, their oversight can often lead them to fail when they try to gain steam. A 2022 CB Insights study of failed startups revealed the top dozen reasons that can lead to an organization’s demise. Three of those reasons are related to a lack of proper infrastructure: a flawed business model (19%), a poorly hired team (14%) and stakeholder disharmony (7%).

    You might want to think of constructing your infrastructure like planning a vacation. Most vacationers don’t put their families in the car and take off for the week without prior planning. They create a general road map based on their goals, their budget, the number of people and maybe some very personalized factors such as preferred types of restaurants or lodging. The road map would need to be flexible enough to handle pivots but sturdy enough to provide a definitive guide, perhaps with a few guardrails.

    The same is true for business. When you’ve invested in a framework for scaling up, you reward yourself with a higher likelihood of seeing your business scaling strategy come to fruition. You also make scaling less stressful because everyone is working toward the same objectives rather than moving toward cross-purposes.

    A solid infrastructure is a crucial building block to ultimately see growth and scalability in your business. Keep the following suggestions in mind to assemble your ideal infrastructure:

    Related: Serve Your Employees With a Better Infrastructure

    1. Make sure you have the right internal team in place

    It will be challenging for your business to keep getting bigger if you have several skills and knowledge gaps in your team. The same is true if your staff is working at (or beyond) full capacity and you don’t plan on bringing in any help. If your employees feel overwhelmed or unprepared as you scale up, you’ll see your growth opportunities fall apart at the seams.

    It is imperative to make sure you have the right people in place that have digital DNA and ensure your term is cross-functional with a high-level understanding of how to serve across all functions. For example, a technical person who knows how to create proper onsite functionality and work with the proper tracking tools such as pixels and tag manager will create results that are significantly more beneficial to the company.

    You can start measuring your team’s strength by developing two organizational charts. The first should show your organization as it is today, and the second should show it as it needs to be for your company to scale. Be sure to pick out any places where team members will require training to participate fully. Then figure out how to deliver that training so you can remain competitive throughout the business’s rapid growth.

    A recent Capterra survey indicates that nearly half of all companies asked said they were putting more funds into upskilling. Doing likewise makes sense because your employees will then be able to exhibit the confidence to master scaling, thanks to their education and the company’s reorganization.

    Related: 4 Mistakes to Avoid While Scaling Up Your Infrastructure

    2. Refine your marketing machine

    If your marketing efforts aren’t producing impressive returns now, they won’t suddenly start working great just because you scale. You could even end up wasting dollars on poorly designed marketing campaigns that don’t reach the right audiences or deliver the data you need. As one study found, around one-quarter of all marketing budget funds could end up going down the drain for myriad reasons.

    Marketing is a critical component because it sets the stage for you to bring in the leads you need to scale. Without more leads, you can’t grow — case closed. So, before you get into growth mode, you need to refine your marketing, from PPC to SEO and all the acronyms in between. Start by determining which marketing tactics are driving the most qualified prospects into the top or middle of your sales funnel. You want to hone those tactics, so start testing ways to make them produce leads on a reliable basis.

    Don’t be afraid to take on a partner to outsource your marketing. Trying to do everything in-house can be both costly and challenging, particularly as your marketing becomes more complex (hint: It will!). The benefits of a partnership with an agency or provider that understands your business are widespread. You’ll have access to expertise, advanced tools and innovative strategies that you don’t usually have in-house. Even if you do have in-house marketing, the team might not be familiar with what works best in an ever-changing digital age. In contrast, an agency with multiple clients is more commonly on the cutting edge of innovation.

    Plus, with an agency, you won’t have to lean so heavily on your capital expenditures and employees to deploy campaigns, track data, create content or generate and interpret reports. Most importantly, a great agency will not only increase your chances to grow successfully but also help you achieve your goals faster with less effort and total investment.

    3. Be certain your product works

    This might sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many companies go all out before making sure they’ve addressed glaring flaws in the items they sell. Even if you’re in a service industry, you must ensure all customer-facing experiences, features, assets and the like are ready for prime time.

    Trying to gain steam when you’re not selling something worth buying makes zero sense and often creates unnecessary friction between buyers and sellers. Nonetheless, companies routinely spend about 20% of their sales income on poor-quality products that haven’t been adequately addressed. Not only will your sales and customer support representatives end up fielding unhappy calls all the time, but your brand reputation could take a terrible hit, too. As part of your infrastructure planning, be honest about any design snags in your offerings. Then spend time correcting them.

    Don’t forget that processes might also deserve some tweaks. Let’s say your customers constantly complain about your time to ship. Those complaints aren’t going to evaporate when you get larger. Smoothing them out makes a lot of sense, especially during the beginning stages of growth.

    Related: Moving Beyond Startup Mode: 5 Tips for Building a Solid Infrastructure

    Scaling might be on your mind in the near future. Don’t rev the motor just yet, though. Make sure your infrastructure roadmap includes everything you need to make your scale adventure an unmitigated success.

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    Ross Denny

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  • How to Avoid These Costly Mistakes in Your Startup’s Sales Strategy

    How to Avoid These Costly Mistakes in Your Startup’s Sales Strategy

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    We live in a time where ideas can become businesses at an unprecedented rate. It has never been faster to have an idea, file for a name, quickly get a logo and business address and move on with that idea. This ease of entry, plus the aftermath of the Great Resignation, “Quiet Quitting” and turbulent market disruptions led our economy to a proliferation of new businesses and startups, many of which are small and agile enough to succeed where larger companies would fail.

    However, that is not without challenges, as startups are under immense pressure to succeed. They must gain traction and prove their worth to investors while maintaining a sense of normalcy and momentum. However, with new startups, many induce self-inflicted problems in the ramp-up to launch and scale.

    We’ve all seen it — the entrepreneur or founder that agonizes over every decision tries to do everything themselves and wastes countless hours over distractions, from agonizing over trivial choices, not making decisions fast enough or even delaying selling the product or service. In the end, startups need to focus on their core mission and not get distracted. Making decisions quickly and efficiently can increase their chances of success.

    What are the most common areas in sales strategy that entrepreneurs need to focus on to avoid costly mistakes?

    1. Realize what your strengths are, and sell to those strengths

    The strength of your brand is essential to find an effective strategy to sell that brand. The team should continuously find direct paths to sales by getting in front of the right audiences, staying consistent and constantly pushing. Branding is vital to reach potential customers, so it is essential to make finding the strength of your brand a priority. Customers must be able to identify with the message that the brand is trying to sell, and they should feel confident in the product or service offered. If a company can manage to do this, then they are well on its way to finding success.

    However, it is not always easy to maintain a strong brand, and it takes a lot of work to keep pushing the message and ensure it reaches the right people. There are many ways to market a product or service, but it is essential to remember that not all of them will be effective for every company. It is vital to research what has worked well for others in the past and then adapt those methods to fit the company’s needs. There will always be some trial and error involved, but as long as the team is willing to put in the effort, there is no reason why the company cannot find success.

    Related: How to Identify Your Competitive Strengths for Your Business Plan

    2. Stop trying to be everything to everybody

    Trying to be everything to everybody is a trap that catches many entrepreneurs. Almost every entrepreneur is guilty of this, which needs to be addressed in strategy before execution. They believe that by offering more products or services, they will be able to attract more customers and grow their business. However, this is often not the case. When a company tries to be all things to everyone, they spread themselves too thin and cannot provide the quality of service that their customers expect. One of the worst traps a new startup can find themselves in is overpromising service, continuously introducing new lines or services and overextending resources that are not part of the company’s core.

    Additionally, constantly introducing new lines or services can confuse customers and make it difficult for them to know what the company offers. Entrepreneurs need to focus on what they do best and not try to be everything to everybody. By doing so, they will be able to provide the quality service that their customers demand and sustainably grow their business.

    Related: You Can’t Be Everything for Everybody, So Stop Trying

    3. Find your niche, and sell to it — consistently

    Consistency is vital to success. A sound sales strategy should be built on a foundation of core values and principles that are unlikely to change over time. Find your core and niche, do not stop selling to it, and continuously improve the profitability of those sales. This stability gives customers and clients confidence that they know what they can expect from the company. It also allows salespeople to build strong relationships with their clients based on trust and mutual understanding.

    In contrast, a “throw everything at it” approach to sales may yield short-term results but is ultimately unsustainable. This strategy is often based on changing messaging, sales techniques and target markets to make quick sales rather than build long-term relationships. Not only is this approach confusing for customers, but it also makes it difficult for salespeople to establish themselves as trusted advisors.

    It is also important to remember that industry partners are essential for success. Cultivate these relationships and work collaboratively. Blaming them for failures is not productive and will only damage valuable partnerships. A sound sales strategy is vital to success, informed by a deep understanding of the core audience and built on solid relationships with industry partners.

    In the end, consistency is critical to success in sales. Companies and entrepreneurs who focus on building a solid foundation for their business are more likely to weather the ups and downs of the market, find growth and scale.

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    Adam Horlock

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  • 3 Tactics to Advance Your Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

    3 Tactics to Advance Your Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Personalization is no longer an optional business strategy: 71% of consumers expect personalized experiences with brands, and even more express frustration with businesses that miss the mark. But it’s not enough to just personalize the message — you must also tailor the delivery to the consumer’s channel of choice.

    Gone are the days when brands could broadcast through a single platform. Today, the omnichannel customer experience reigns supreme, and that means the consumer is in the driver’s seat. Omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of branding, personalized messaging and online and offline touchpoints that create a more profound customer experience.

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    Douglas Wilber

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  • Let Your Team Decide Their Approach to Hybrid Work. Here’s Why and How.

    Let Your Team Decide Their Approach to Hybrid Work. Here’s Why and How.

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    A November 2022 survey by Gallup finds that 46% of hybrid employees report being engaged at work when their team determines their hybrid work policy of when to come to the office. By contrast, if employees are free to determine their own approach, only 41% report being engaged. If the leadership determines the top-down policy for everyone, only 35% are engaged, and if it’s their direct supervisor, 32% are engaged.

    It makes sense when you think about it. Team members know best what they need in order to collaborate and socialize together effectively. After all, the only useful function of the office is to facilitate collaboration, socialization and mentoring: people are much more productive in their individual tasks at home. So it makes all the sense in the world for the rank-and-file teams to determine what works best for their needs.

    Yet the Gallup survey shows only 13% of employees say that their team determines their approach to hybrid work. That’s unfortunate and undermines engagement among hybrid workers. And it’s easy to fix.

    From my experience helping 21 companies figure out their hybrid and remote work arrangements, the best practice is for the leadership to provide broad but flexible guidelines for the whole company. Then, let teams of rank-and-file employees determine what works best for them.

    Related: So Your Employees Don’t Want to Come Back to the Office. Here’s How to Create Purpose and Culture in Remote Teams

    Empower each team leader to determine, in consultation with their team members, how each team should function. The choice should be driven by the goals and collaborative capacities of each team rather than the personal preferences of the team leader. The top leadership should encourage team leaders to permit, wherever possible, team members who desire to do so to work remotely.

    To set the stage, first, conduct an anonymous survey of your staff on their preferences for remote work. All companies are different, and you want to know about your staff in particular. More importantly, employees want to feel that they have input on major company decisions. That applies especially to policies concerning working conditions. You’ll get a lot more buy-in, even from staff who may be unhappy with your final policies, if they feel consulted and heard.

    As part of the survey, have respondents indicate who their team leader is: that keeps the survey answers anonymous, but can be provided to team leaders to help them understand the desires of their teams.

    The reason it’s important to ask this in the surveys is that many lower-level supervisors feel a personal discomfort with work from home. They feel a loss of control if they can’t see their staff and are eager to get back to their previous mode of supervising.

    That’s why there’s a low level of engagement when team leads are given sole discretion to make the decisions. You need to have team leaders understand what are the actual preferences of their team members without any team member feeling inhibited by giving their team leader undesirable information.

    While you may choose to ask a variety of questions, be sure to find out about their desire for frequency of work in the office. Here’s a good way to phrase it:

    Which of these would be your preferred working style going forward?

    • A) Fully remote, coming in once a quarter for a team-building retreat
    • B) 1 day a week in the office, the rest at home
    • C) 2 days a week in the office
    • D) 3 days a week in the office
    • E) 4 days a week in the office
    • F) Full-time in the office

    In all the companies where I consulted, there were never more than a quarter who wanted to go back to the office full-time. In fact, one company with over 3,000 employees had 61% of its staff express a desire for fully remote work. And it wasn’t even a tech company.

    In the highly probable case that your results aren’t too different from the typical company, you’ll want to follow the lead of the companies I helped. Namely, you’ll institute a hybrid-first model, with some flexibility for employees who want to work remotely full-time and whose roles permit them to do so.

    Next, make sure that team leaders justify the time their team needs to be in the office. That justification should stem from the kind of activities done by the team. Team members should be free to do their independent tasks wherever they want. By contrast, many — not all — collaborative tasks are best done in person.

    Related: 3 Ways to Empower Everyone to Lead (and How to Do It)

    Team leaders should evaluate the proportion of individual versus collaborative tasks done by their teams. Then, they should use that proportion as a basis for a discussion with the team to determine the frequency of when team members come to the office. And it should be a consensus-based decision-making process, informed by the surveys, with a focus on collaboration, socialization and mentoring. All team members should come to the office on the same days of the week to facilitate collaboration.

    What if team members wish to be fully remote and have a team leader who doesn’t want any remote team members? If this team member can demonstrate high effectiveness and productivity, and if their tasks are mostly individual — 80% or more — the team leader should allow them to work remotely. That team member should only come to the office once a quarter for a team-building retreat.

    However, if the team member needs to collaborate intensely with their team, they might not be able to fulfill that aspect of their role effectively if everyone else is in the office. In that case, they need to either come into the office at least once a week. Alternatively, they might consider finding a new team with a more accommodating team leader. Or they might adjust their role on the team to take on largely-individual tasks.

    There should be a very good reason if the team leader desires more than two days in the office per week. Such reasons exist.

    For example, in one company for which I consulted, the sales teams who placed outbound sales calls decided to do full-time office work. The team leaders argued persuasively that sales staff benefited greatly from being surrounded by other sales staff during outbound calls. Such calls are draining and sap motivation. Being surrounded by others on the sales floor making similar calls boosts motivation and energy. Moreover, hearing others make calls offers an opportunity to learn from their successful techniques, which is difficult to arrange in telework settings. However, such exceptions are rare.

    Generally speaking, no more than 5% of your staff should be forced to be in the office full-time. Surveys show that about 80% of workers who are capable of working remotely expect to do so. Employers indicate they will continue offering a variety of hybrid work options. Yet many are unsure about how to implement this model effectively.

    For maximizing employee engagement, while also facilitating team collaboration, the best practice involves having teams make the decisions. This team-led model will ensure that team members can collaborate most effectively. Using this technique will enable you to seize a competitive advantage in the return to the office.

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    Gleb Tsipursky

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